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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



THE OUTLOOK FOR RELIGION 

12mo. Net, 75 Cents 



Religion and 
the Mind 

By 

GEORGE RICHMOND GROSE 

President De Pauw University 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



,Gc7 



Copyright, 1915, by 
GEORGE RICHMOND GROSE 




SEP 14 1915 

©CI.A411478 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

Foreword 7 

I. Christ and the Intellect 9 

II. Education a Religious Obligation . . 19 

III. The Task of Christian Education. . 26 

IV. The Failure of Intellectual Cul- 

ture . . . . 36 

V. The Place of Religion in Education 42 

VI. The Growing Mind and the Chris- 
tian Ideal 53 

VII. Intellectual Honesty 61 

VIII. The Religion of the Mind 69 

IX. Education and Vision 78 

X. Does Education Endanger Faith?. . 87 

XI. The Limitations of Knowledge 97 

XII. The Goal of Christian Culture 106 



FOREWORD 

THIS little book is the outgrowth of twenty 
years' contact with young people who 
want to have faith in God and to keep on their 
feet intellectually. They have both the will to 
believe and the unwillingness to quit thinking. 
Honest doubters are asking, "Can religion and 
culture live together?" The question is not 
chiefly academic or speculative. It is vital. 
Unless religion can be made intelligent, and 
intellect can be made religious, either is barren. 
In these pages the writer seeks to express his 
ever-deepening conviction that education and 
religion must unite in making an all-round man. 
The aim is to set forth the meaning of 
Christian education. These studies make a 
plea for fervent piety and fearless thinking. 
They also seek to impress it upon young people 
that mental culture is not merely a privilege, a 
luxury for those who feel they can afford it, 
but is a high moral duty. If we are responsible 

7 



FOREWORD 

for the use and enlargement of material wealth, 
we are even more responsible for the cultivation 
and consecration of our mental powers. We 
need to stress also the dominance of moral 
rather than material motives in education. 

The writer was honored with an invitation 
from the late Dr. John T. McFarland, a few 
months before his death, to furnish a series of 
articles for the Adult Bible Class Monthly on 
"Christ in the Intellectual Life." The author 
is indebted to Dr. Henry H. Meyer, editor of 
the Sunday School publications of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church, and to the publishers 
for the privilege of publishing these studies in 
their present form. They are sent forth again 
with the hope and prayer that the reader may 
be helped to find that the things of the mind 
and the things of Christ are most worth while. 
George Richmond Grose. 

Greencastle, Indiana, July, 1915. 



8 



CHRIST AND THE INTELLECT 

THERE is a popular affectation that learn- 
ing and religion are divorced. It is fash- 
ionable in some circles to tolerate religion as a 
harmless superstition, to regard worship as fu- 
tile, and to treat the teachings of the Christian 
faith as if they had no intellectual standing 
place. In the general break-up of conventional 
ideas many intelligent people are sitting in the 
seat of the scornful. Consequently, they are 
missing the significance of religion for life. 

On the part of others there is an opposite 
attitude. They attempt to exalt religion by 
discounting culture. The college is supposed to 
detract from the glory of the church. The 
things of the mind are sneered at while the 
things of the spirit are lauded. 

Here are two present-day tendencies running 
9 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

side by side, the one glorifying the intellect, 
the other glorifying Christ. Irreverent culture 
sets itself over against ignorant piety. The 
result is alike unfortunate both for culture and 
for religion. Education without ethical sense or 
spiritual motive develops a one-sided character. 
Mental keenness and power without right guid- 
ance and moral responsibility is a peril to 
society; while ignorant goodness is a barrier to 
all progress. Though the statement may be 
exaggerated, Newman Smythe was at least look- 
ing in the direction of an important truth when 
he declared that the most dangerous man is the 
ignorant good man, whose goodness floats his 
ignorance, while his ignorance does its deadly 
work. 

What is the relation of culture and religion? 
What has education of the mind to do with 
Christian character? Is there vital connection 
between intellectual efficiency and spiritual ex- 
perience? Has culture moral obligations and 
spiritual tasks? Is there a religion of the mind 
as well as a religion of the heart? Has Jesus a 
message for the mind which is indispensable to 
higher living? The answer to these questions 
10 



CHRIST AND THE INTELLECT 

is the task to which the writer will address him- 
self in this series of studies. 

In considering the place of the mind in reli- 
gion it is, first of all, important to avoid a 
clumsy sort of psychology which divides up the 
human faculties into so many closed compart- 
ments. When we speak of the intellect, and 
emotions, and will, we do not mean that there 
is any hard and fast separation of these human 
powers. The intellect is the whole man think- 
ing. The heart is the whole man feeling. The 
will is the whole man determining. By the 
religion of the mind, then, we simply mean 
religion in relation to a man's thinking. 

But does Christ address himself specifically 
and definitely to a man's thought-life? There 
can be no question about the appeal of Christ 
to the heart. The symbolism of religion, the 
rituals of worship, the hymns of the church, 
and the prayers of the devout, all appeal might- 
ily to the emotions. Nor is there any doubt 
that religion has to do with the will. If Mat- 
thew Arnold is right in saying that conduct is 
three fourths of life, it is equally true that what 
a man wills is the larger part of religion. "He 

11 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

that wills to do his will shall know of the 
teaching whether it be of God or whether I 
speak of myself" is the Master's test both of 
religious truth and life. While religion appeals 
to the will through the emotions, its first ap- 
proach is to the intellect. Jesus's first word 
was "Come and see." "Investigate, examine, 
make the experiment. My teaching is to be 
tested in the laboratory of life." The New 
Testament bristles with apostolic appeals to the 
mind: "Think on these things"; "Test the 
spirits"; "Study to show thyself approved unto 
God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, 
rightly dividing the truth"; "Ye shall know the 
truth"; "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy mind." These are only representa- 
tive scriptural declarations of our religious re- 
sponsibility for the use of the mind. 

Further: the life of Jesus illustrates the vital 
relation between intellectual culture and spirit- 
ual character and efficiency. He was not 
educated in the schools, but his mind was 
thoroughly disciplined. For eighteen years at 
least he was in close contact with nature, with 
the life of his country, and with the great 

12 



CHRIST AND THE INTELLECT 

minds of Jewish history. The Gospel of Luke 
contains a biographical clue to the marvelous 
intellectual grasp and spiritual influence of 
Jesus. "And Jesus advanced in wisdom and 
stature and in favor with God and men." 
This is the story, not of a human prodigy, but 
of the normal physical, intellectual, and spirit- 
ual development of a perfect manhood. His 
matchless insight into truth, his grasp upon the 
principles of the higher life, his power of in- 
vigorating and transforming the lives of men 
are a tribute to a cloudless mind and a stainless 
soul. 

Now to be more specific, what has Christ to 
do with the intellect? Or, what is the place 
of the mind in religion? 

First of all, the facts of Christian experi- 
ence must be intellectually interpreted. The 
doctrines of Christianity are primarily thought 
problems. The eternal hope is constantly 
challenged to give a reason. Every genera- 
tion must make its own creed, and every 
individual must think through and work out 
his own faith. A living faith cannot be handed 
down by inheritance. We no sooner come to 
13 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

an experience of spiritual things than the mind 
must relate this experience to other facts of 
life. In other words, religion cannot live and 
grow strong without a theology. Character 
must have some basal creed upon which to rest. 
Life springs out of truth. The supreme task of 
the mind, therefore, is to discover the truth 
which makes men free, and to interpret the 
truth which will create and sustain the fullest 
and richest life. 

There is manifestly, then, no more important 
thing to do than to discover the essential 
teachings of Christianity and to set them ablaze 
along the common ways of men. To seize the 
cardinal doctrines of our holy faith, and to 
distinguish them from the accumulated growth 
of nonessentials, until men come to know Christ 
— that is a work of supreme urgency. And that 
is just the task of the Christian mind. There 
can be no vigorous religion without a vital theol- 
ogy, and theology cannot be vitalizing unless it 
is rational. If there is lack of the heroic and 
the sacrificial elements in Christian living to- 
day, it is because the religious thinking of the 
time is flabby and boneless. When Christian 
14 



CHRIST AND THE INTELLECT 

believers think intensely and sanely upon the 
mystery of godliness, then may we expect to 
see the wonders of redemption multiplied. 

Again, the duties of the Christian life, none 
the less than the doctrines of Christianity, are 
primarily problems for the mind. Take, for 
example, the foremost duty which Jesus com- 
mands — the love of our neighbor. When the 
impulse toward Christian neighborliness has 
been implanted in a man's life, what specific 
things is he to do? And how is he to do them? 
The spirit of good will and of helpfulness which 
discovers the victim of robbers by the roadside 
is the supreme thing, of course, but what will 
love command the good Samaritan to do for 
the bleeding sufferer? Dressing wounds and 
caring for the injured is a task requiring 
thought and skill. It is not enough to love the 
wayside victim with pitying sentiment; he must 
be loved with thoughtful care. In other words, 
the very first steps in Christian duty require 
hard, earnest thinking. In the doing of the 
plain everyday duties there is a large place for 
the mind. 

And how else than by the eyes of an en- 
15 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

lightened understanding do we discover the 
mighty tasks of Christian civilization? Many 
evils are challenged, many customs are under 
the ban of public sentiment, many improve- 
ments in industrial conditions are demanded be- 
cause men are loving God with the mind. The 
impulse of brotherly love demands freedom for 
the slave; but how to use his freedom is a 
problem for the mind to work out. How to 
destroy the saloon and the traffic in human 
honor and virtue, how to distribute equitably 
the profits of industry, how to cure the wretch- 
edness of poverty, how to make the waste 
places of the earth blossom with roses, and to 
build highways for the righteous — these are 
problems for the Christian mind. 

Jesus at twelve years of age is hearing the 
learned men of the temple and asking them 
questions. At the same time he announces the 
inmost conviction of his life — his allegiance to 
the divine will. "I must be about my Father's 
business." Hofmann's famous painting, "Christ 
in the Temple," finely interprets this incident 
in the life of the Master. The youth with up- 
turned face and eager eye is seeking after 
16 



CHRIST AND THE INTELLECT 

truth, while at the same time he is in his 
Father's house. The light of learning and the 
joy of divine fellowship are both in Jesus's 
face. 

This is both history and parable. That early 
temple incident in the life of Jesus must be 
reproduced in the life of every man. Open- 
minded inquiry, earnest seeking for the truth 
in the presence of the scholars, a determination 
to know all that can be known, the intellect 
fearlessly pushing out into the farthest bounds 
of human knowledge, and yet, taking every 
step in conscious obedience to God — this was 
the spirit of the Master. And this is the spirit 
of Christian culture. If religion is to be kept 
sane and strong, the mind must not cease to 
ask questions. The problems of life cannot be 
outflanked, they must be met. They can be 
met only by hard, earnest thinking. It is mere 
cant for men to pray for a solution of their 
problems when they ought to think. On the 
other hand, life cannot be lived hopefully and 
triumphantly by asking and answering ques- 
tions. God must be its background and its 
foreground. From him we must take our com- 
17 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

mands. Learning and piety must never be 
divorced. The college and the church must 
stand near by each other. Eager for truth 
the reverent intellect evermore utters its deep- 
est conviction — "I must be about my Father's 
business." 



18 



II 

EDUCATION A RELIGIOUS OBLIGATION 

THERE is no longer serious doubt as to the 
value of education for the practical ends 
of life. The trained mind and the skilled hand 
are in demand because they produce results. 
And because education puts into men's hands 
keener tools for doing the world's work, and 
educated labor turns out a larger and better 
product, the practical mind of the age is calling 
for the school and college. There is no escap- 
ing the fact that to-day the uneducated man 
does not have one chance in a hundred for 
business and professional success. The ma- 
terial conquest of the earth which has been 
made in the last century would have been 
impossible but for the power of the trained 
mind. The enormous multiplication of wealth, 
through the application of scientific knowledge 
19 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

to the problems of manufacture and production 
and distribution, the rapid extermination of 
disease by medical science and surgery are the 
achievements of the educated mind. The 
trained intellect is the one indispensable instru- 
ment of success everywhere. It is the recogni- 
tion of these facts which has led the state to 
provide in our day a magnificent system of 
public school instruction. The obligation to 
extend learning for the sake of efficiency in 
doing the world's work is quite universally 
recognized. 

But it is a misfortune that education has 
been so largely regarded as an expedient, or as 
a means to a material end. The utilitarian 
conception of education has made for coarse 
materialistic views of life and for cheap and 
superficial educational methods. It is true that 
thorough intellectual discipline is indispensable 
as a preparation for the tasks of life. It is 
tremendously true that the culture of the mind 
is a moral and religious obligation. 

The moral obligation of intelligence springs, 
first of all, out of the mind's possibilities of de- 
velopment. There is no question about the 
20 



EDUCATION A RELIGIOUS OBLIGATION 

value of physical training for equipment for 
certain practical tasks. But, beyond this, the 
very fact that the human body is capable of 
the athlete's strength and the soldier's en- 
durance and the charms of beauty calls might- 
ily upon everyone to develop the physical 
powers. And just because no limit has yet 
been set in the development of the human 
intellect education is an inescapable moral obli- 
gation. It would be a crime against civilization 
for a landowner to attempt to hold a vast tract 
of land in the heart of a fertile country, refusing 
to cultivate it, or to grant a franchise to high- 
ways and industries. And yet that offense 
against society is as nothing compared to the 
moral trifling of one who neglects or refuses to 
open the mind to truth, and to send it forth 
upon its limitless destiny. If one has undevel- 
oped capacities, or unrealized possibilities, his 
first great duty is to find himself, to make 
himself, to become a man. Man is still in the 
making. 

Again, if we take the life of Jesus as a guide, 
the obligation to enrich the mind becomes high 
and commanding. We are apt to overlook his 
21 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

education. The evangelists set his three years 
of public ministry in the foreground and his 
eighteen years of preparation in the back- 
ground. They devote scores of pages to a 
record of what he spoke and wrought, but only 
one sentence to the story of his education — 
"And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, 
and in favor with God and man." Here is the 
biographical clue to his matchless life. He spent 
eighteen years in God's best schools in prepara- 
tion for three years of work — six years of 
preparation for every one of work. There is 
no indication in the Gospels that his matchless 
powers were a prodigy. They were rather a 
growth. "The child grew and waxed strong, 
becoming full of wisdom: and the grace of God 
was upon him." His youth was a period of 
intellectual culture and spiritual enrichment. 
Never has any human life been so rigidly held 
to the great task of self-becoming and self- 
enriching, and self -sanctifying. The eighteen 
patient, silent years of Jesus mean nothing 
more significant to us than their emphasis 
upon the religious obligation of thorough self- 
development. 

22 



EDUCATION A RELIGIOUS OBLIGATION 

The religious obligation of personal culture 
becomes even more impressive when we con- 
sider it from the standpoint of the service we 
are called upon to give to the world. Culture 
is not to be sought chiefly as a means of ma- 
terial success nor as a personal adornment. 
Rich as are the joys of a cultivated mind, 
education is not for its own sake. The glory 
of the scholar is in his consecration to the 
service of his fellows. This was Longfellow's 
ideal of the educated man. "Where shall the 
scholar live? In solitude or in society? In the 
green stillness of the country, where he can 
hear the heart of nature beat, or in the dark, 
gray city, where he can feel and hear the 
throbbing heart of man? I make answer for 
him and say, Tn the dark, gray city.' " And 
this was the Master's thought of his own 
obligation. "For their sakes I sanctify my- 
self." "I set myself apart — I educate myself. 
For what? For their sakes — for the service 
which I can give to the world." Is not this the 
law of all true life? It is the largest self- 
realization, and the richest culture for the sake 
of the greatest service of our fellow men. If 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

society is to be served, and if the world is to be 
saved, it must be done by men who come to 
their task with mind enriched by knowledge 
and character nurtured by religion. There is 
no human enterprise that calls for so thorough 
preparation as the service of our fellow men. 
The highest art is the art of doing good. Bishop 
Vincent, apostle of modern culture and Chris- 
tian faith, once said in a college chapel talk: 
"Young men, don't be in such a hurry to get 
out to save the world. Take sufficient time to 
complete your preparation for your work. The 
world will need saving four years from now, 
and you will then be more capable of saving 
the world." There is no place to-day for 
ignorant goodness. Men must not only be 
good, but they must be good for something. 
If the workman of God is not to be ashamed, 
he must be thoroughly fitted for every good 
work. The great movements of human uplift 
have centered about some high-souled person- 
ality. The new epochs in philanthropy, in re- 
form, and in religion have been created by 
minds that first made themselves strong. The 
missionary crusade of the first century sprang 
24 



EDUCATION A RELIGIOUS OBLIGATION 

out of the imperial mind of the apostle Paul. 
The leaders of the Reformation were men of 
eminent learning. The Wesley an revival of the 
eighteenth century had its beginning in an 
Oxford Club. The measure of a man's service 
to the world is the fullness of his own life. 
Achievement never rises higher than person- 
ality. What a man does is never greater than 
what he is. 



25 



Ill 

THE TASK OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

WHAT is the chief aim of all education? 
There is a wide difference of opinion. 
One answers, "The purpose of the schools is to 
fit men for vocational efficiency." Another 
says, "Culture is for its own sake." Still 
another holds that the main business of learn- 
ing is to enrich life and to develop character. 
Now, it makes a vast deal of difference whether 
our educational institutions are seeking to pre- 
pare men for a livelihood or for the living of 
life. If the college is a mere "adjunct of the 
shop and the farm," its claim is altogether 
different than if it is set to furnish men for 
worthful and heroic living. What is the su- 
preme task of Christian education? 

The first aim of learning is to make men intel- 
lectually efficient. The latent energies of the 
26 



TASK OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

human intellect must be aroused and developed. 
The thing of first importance is for a man to 
discover his mind and then "learn how to make 
full and productive use of his discovery." There 
is no need more imperative than that men 
should be able to think through things for 
themselves, and to be able to discriminate 
between the essentials and the nonessentials, 
and prove the things which are of permanent 
worth. It is not enough to stock men with 
knowledge; they must be able to reason soundly 
and constructively. The student's first task is 
to develop the power and acquire the habit of 
clear, strong, fearless thinking upon life's 
problems. 

We only need to face the conditions of mod- 
ern society to discover that the one hope for 
healthy and permanent progress everywhere lies 
in the increase of "moral though tfulness." The 
one solitary hope of the hour is in men who 
can and dare think independently and respon- 
sibly. The difficulties of democracy are grow- 
ing increasingly heavy; and the only way to 
meet these difficulties is to teach men to find 
and to use their minds. If democracy is not 

n 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

to become a reckless mob, our citizens must be 
thinking men; if industry is not to be brutal- 
izing, our workers must be thinking men; if 
religion is not to become fanatical, or senti- 
mental, believers must be thinking men. Presi- 
dent Woodrow Wilson makes this timely ob- 
servation: "The modern world is an exacting 
one, and the things it exacts are mostly intel- 
lectual." The first high aim, then, of all 
liberal education is to give men the power to 
see clearly, to imagine vividly, to think soundly 
and enthusiastically upon the things which are 
pure and just and true. "Where there is no 
vision the people perish." And there can be 
no vision where there is no responsible thinking. 
If the Christian school is to hold a worthy place 
to-day, it must exalt intellectual training and 
activity, giving to men and women an appre- 
ciation of the joys of the mind and a zest in 
thinking through and working out the prob- 
lems of living. 

A second task of education is to relate culture 

to life. While knowledge is its own exceeding 

great reward, beyond itself it has a greater 

reward. While learning brings rich satisfac- 

28 



TASK OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

tions to life, beyond these there are the noble 
ends of life which learning may serve. The 
glory of a rich, strong personality produced by 
broad culture is in serving the high uses of life. 
The institutions of learning are performing an 
inestimable service in raising up a generation of 
men and women with cultivated imagination, 
with an appreciation of art, with powers of 
observation, and with the joy of intellectual 
exercise. But beyond and above this education 
has a more serious purpose. It must serve all 
the intelligent ends of living. There must be 
the "union of learning with the fine art of 
living." Life must be made safer, healthier, 
happier, more prosperous, and more satisfying. 
Now, it is the failure to relate itself to these 
great practical uses of life that has provoked 
much of the criticism of higher education. If 
the college and the university do not educate 
men for something, their work is discredited, 
and rightly so. Beyond the decorative value of 
knowledge is its serviceableness when translated 
into life. Culture not for its own sake, but for 
life's sake, is the watchword of the present day. 
A distinguished teacher of Greek once said to a 
29 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

student who was making a blundering recita- 
tion, "What are you here for?" A moment 
later the professor answered his own question: 
'Tor two things: first to get Greek, second to 
get character." To get Greek so as to get 
character and personal power is the first achieve- 
ment of all education. The new ideal which is 
pulsating in the educational movement of the 
present day is the vital relation of learning to 
life. 

The rapid development of the State univer- 
sities of the West is, in large measure, in re- 
sponse to the popular demand that knowledge 
shall serve the practical needs of our common 
life. The vast enterprises of our modern civili- 
zation cannot be advanced by men whose sole 
interest is in the cultural studies. Men must 
be trained for doing the rough work of the 
world, clearing the forests, building the high- 
ways, operating the mines, and constructing the 
bridges. The college is to teach the principles 
and foster the ideals which will make for better 
streets, more sanitary houses, richer farms, safer 
travel, more prosperous livelihood. 

But there is danger of learning devoting itself 



TASK OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

chiefly to the material side of life. Knowledge 
is dangerous when its aim becomes coarsely 
materialistic, when it cares for skill chiefly for 
the sake of piling up wealth. It is highly im- 
portant to fit a man for some specific industry 
or calling. It is a far greater thing to fit him 
for intelligent, purposeful living of life. A 
skillful worker is not so valuable an asset in 
society as a strong man with a reserve of intel- 
lectual energy and a background of personality 
upon which everything he does may draw. The 
whole task of modern education is not in train- 
ing farmers, or mechanics, or teachers, or 
preachers, but the training of men for clear, 
accurate thinking, for earnest and heroic action 
in every field of human effort. And the chief 
duty of education has not been performed when 
the youth of the nation have been vocationalized 
and set in the straight road to financial pros- 
perity. Christianity utters a vigorous protest 
against the bread-and-butter theory of educa- 
tion. The stern prophecy of Emerson must yet 
be fulfilled: "The sluggard intellect of this 
continent will look from under its iron lids 
and fulfill the postponed expectation of the 

31 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

world with something better than the exertion 
of mechanical skill." 

In this day of emphasis upon utility in edu- 
cation there is grave danger of vocational train- 
ing dwarfing the man and of his losing 

In action's dizzying eddy whirled 
The something that infects the world. 

The multitude is blind to the fact that mere 
skill in production and the increase of income 
will not serve the most urgent problems of 
society. What is the foremost need of our 
day? Mechanical experts or creators of public 
sentiment? More men of skill in mechanics and 
agriculture and in the other fields of human 
labor are not so greatly needed at this hour as 
an intelligent citizenship, with wise leadership 
in industrial, political, and religious life. We 
have a thousand men with a good livelihood to 
one who can think and make men think. "Not 
the men who add to our quantity of materials, 
but the men who deepen the quality of our 
living, are the real benefactors of the world." 
The age imperatively requires expert ability, 
but the expert must know how to relate his 



TASK OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

talent to the deeper life of his age. Skill 
must be added to character; the man must be 
grown and then the worker. It is important to 
store men's minds with facts, but it is quite as 
important to keep alive their idealism and their 
public spirit. The high function of Christian 
education, therefore, is not chiefly to train men 
for making a living, but, rather, to inspire and 
guide them in the making of a strong and 
purposeful life. 

The third task of Christian education is to 
dominate all culture with moral earnestness and 
with spiritual passion. If it is important to 
"link learning with life," it is quite as im- 
portant that all culture should be consecrated 
to the spiritual uses of life. Men with superior 
learning sometimes prostitute their abilities in 
promoting corrupt undertakings. To give a 
man a disciplined mind and the power to lead 
and command, without any fixed moral prin- 
ciples, without unswerving integrity, without a 
first devotion to good causes, is only to multiply 
the perils of civilization. The practical ineffi- 
ciency of a "godless knowledge" in promoting 
business prosperity and in strengthening the 



RELIGION' AND THE MIND 

institutions of free government has already been 
proved. Our national resources are being rap- 
idly developed. Wealth is miLltiplying. Great 
empires of material power he at our feet. The 
result is an increase of luxury, an ambition for 
the accumulation of property, and a temptation 
to seek satisfaction in things. The transcendent 
task of Christian culture is holding before a 
people who are promoting the material interests 
of the nation the spiritual uses of their wealth 
and power. And unless our colleges and uni- 
versities stand for "plain living and high think- 
ing" and make men care for learning and for 
integrity and for public virtue, they fail utterly. 
The new economic reforms, the crusade in the 
interests of a purer society, the civic move- 
ments in municipal and national government, 
are trumpet calls to men of learning and light 
to serve the world. The highest ideal of edu- 
cation is that of the Master Teacher, "For 
their sakes I sanctify myself" — culture not for 
its own sake, character not for its own sake, 
but both culture and character raised to the 
highest point of efficiency for the service of the 
spiritual ends of life. Whenever culture centers 
34 



TASK OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

in itself, whenever character becomes an end in 
itself, strength passes into weakness. The pages 
of history are full of the pathetic story of men of 
genius, with trained minds and rich imagina- 
tion, whose lives were not felt in the world. The 
reason is they were lacking in moral earnestness 
and in consecration to spiritual ideals. The 
ultimate test of every work of genius, of every 
book that is written, of every state that is 
built, and of every character that is formed is 
this: Does it serve with moral purpose the 
spiritual interests of life? Unless men from 
the schools take on their shoulders the burden 
of humanity, saying to the world, "Ourselves 
your servants for Jesus' sake," education cannot 
long hold its high place. 



IV 



THE FAILURE OF INTELLECTUAL 
CULTURE 

IN this mind-crowned age we point with just 
pride to the achievements of learning. The 
mastery of the material forces of nature, the 
development of the physical resources of the 
earth, the rapid production of wealth, the 
progress in communication and travel, the ad- 
vance of medical and surgical science — these 
are achievements of the educated mind. Truly, 
one of our twentieth-century days is more 
wonderful than all the Arabian Nights. And 
in all these mighty doings the trained intellect 
is the indispensable tool. 

But in our praise of learning we must not 
forget that knowledge has its failures as well 
as its successes. Intellectual culture alone is 
insufficient for the needs and tasks of life. 
Education is only an instrument. A fine tool 
in the hands of a workman does not guarantee 
36 



FAILURE OF INTELLECTUAL CULTURE 

a worthy product. Quite as much depends 
upon the character of the workman as upon 
his skill. The mind alone, however rich its 
attainments, is not sufficient for all the neces- 
sities of life. 

First of all, culture fails in making an all- 
round manhood. It increases power. It opens 
the treasures of the arts and sciences. It dis- 
covers new worlds of enjoyment and achieve- 
ment. But the great task before the individual 
and before society is the making of a man, the 
development of personality. Keen and ac- 
curate thinking does not insure lofty character. 
One may be accomplished and yet brutal, bril- 
liant and at the same time vicious. John 
Stuart Mill, apostle of modern culture, before 
the close of his career came to the strong con- 
viction that life needs religion. There are 
"evils that culture cannot cure; there are 
blessings it cannot bestow. It cannot give 
peace to the conscience; it cannot shield life 
from sorrow; it cannot lessen the anguish of 
the human heart or dispel the shadow of death." 

Some months ago there appeared in a popu- 
lar magazine an article making a wholesale 
37 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

charge of immorality and irreligion in the 
American colleges. The article is a libel. No 
higher average of character can be found any- 
where among our youth than is to be found in 
the students of the colleges and the univer- 
sities. But there is this basis of fact in the 
charge against the colleges — learning alone does 
not give men strength to resist temptation and 
to live nobly. Life must have the inspiration, 
the guidance and safeguards of religion to 
insure lofty character. Symmetry and balance 
are quite as indispensable as learning. The 
failure of culture is that it often produces men 
who are clear-minded, but cynical; keen, but 
cold; strong, but arbitrary; wise, but bigoted; 
positive, but intolerant. Culture alone is not 
sufficient for the development of an all-round 
symmetrical manhood. 

Another failure of education is in fitting men 
for the practical tasks and for the everyday 
work of the world. Perhaps the most common 
criticism made against the schools is that their 
graduates are not fitted for useful work. But 
this shortcoming is not so much a matter of 
method as it is of motive. Talent and skill 
38 



FAILURE OF INTELLECTUAL CULTURE 

are no more indispensable for inefficiency in 
doing the world's work than vision and sym- 
pathy and courage. Theodore P. Shonts, 
speaking from the standpoint of a man of 
affairs, declared, "The educated man who lacks 
character has a far more serious handicap than 
the uneducated man with character." The 
great enterprises of trade and industry are 
safe only when they are in the hands of men 
of intellect and character. Our material great- 
ness is threatened unless moral conviction keeps 
pace with intellectual culture. Vast piles of 
steel and stone do not make a great civiliza- 
tion. Greed is as corrupting, licentiousness is 
as deadly, drink is as degrading among the 
learned as among the ignorant. Knowledge 
alone has no power to save the individual or 
society. Through all the streets of our civiliza- 
tion must flow the river of life. This alone is 
the guarantee of a better day. In business it 
is not enough to have educated experts. The 
need is for men who will not fatten on luxury 
and use their power for oppression, but men 
who can see the relation of things to character 
and who will make and use wealth for the well- 
39 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

being of their fellows. The problems of po- 
litical life have no hope of solution except as 
our public servants become men of vision, in- 
corruptible in integrity and sensitive in honor. 
In religion it is becoming increasingly evident 
that the light of learning alone cannot guide 
men into life eternal. The man of culture alone 
is not big enough for to-day's tasks anywhere. 
For the stupendous tasks of the twentieth 
century we need men who are trained by 
the college and inspired and fashioned by the 
church. 

God give us men; times like these demand 

Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands. 

Men whom the lust of office does not kill; 

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; 
Men who possess opinions and a will; 

Men who have honor; men who will not lie; 
Men who can stand before the demagogue 

And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking. 
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the mists 

In public duty and in private thinking. 
For while the rabble with their thumb- worn creeds. 
Their large professions, and their little deeds 
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! freedom weeps, 
Wrong rules the land, and waiting justice sleeps. 

Culture and learning have always united in 
making the great leaders of our race. The 
40 



FAILURE OF INTELLECTUAL CULTURE 

learning of Erasmus never could have kindled 
the fires of the Reformation. The burning 
heart of Luther must be added. The greatest 
force of the eighteenth century for human up- 
lift was not Goethe, the man of letters, but John 
Wesley, in whom learning and piety finely 
united. Mr. Huxley has said that civilization 
is far more indebted to George Fox, the mystic, 
than to Benjamin Franklin, the practical sage. 
Knowledge is power, but to be a power for 
good it must have the pure heart of religion. 
The library and the laboratory are indispen- 
sable, but they have little moral value. If so- 
ciety cannot be saved without education, no 
more can education be saved without religion. 
The power to brace men's wills and to purify 
their hearts is not in the schools. In all the halls 
of learning the Divine Voice must be heard — 
"This is the way of life, walk ye in it." If so- 
ciety is to be saved from being mammonized, 
if the iron hand of industry is to be softened, 
if righteousness is to become a resistless power 
in the land, learning must seek religion, and 
religion must evermore be kept sane and strong 
by learning. 

41 



THE PLACE OF RELIGION IN 
EDUCATION 

IT is clearly evident that education and reli- 
gion are the foremost interests of human 
life. They have to do with personal character, 
with business, and with all the institutions of 
society. While this statement would be gen- 
erally accepted, there is in the popular mind 
the haziest idea of the relation of religion and 
education. 

Historically, the connection between educa- 
tion and religion has been close. During the 
mediaeval centuries learning was kept alive by 
the monks in the monasteries. The first Ameri- 
can colleges were founded and nurtured by 
churchmen. The seals of the oldest colleges 
and universities were stamped with the in- 
signia of the Christian faith. The early colon- 



RELIGION IN EDUCATION 

ists laid at one and the same time the founda- 
tions of the church and the school. Religious 
instruction was an important part of the cur- 
ricula of all the schools. But when the popula- 
tion of America became religiously so diverse, 
religious instruction in the schools of the state 
ceased. With the complete separation of 
church and state, and the disappearance of all 
religious teaching in the public schools, there has 
developed an increased interest in the question 
of the relation between education and religion. 
More than ever before both education and 
religion are being defined in terms of life. 
Whatever the method of education may be, its 
aim is to fit men and women for life. The 
most popular appeal that can be made for 
learning is that it issues in larger life. A half 
dozen leading American educators writing re- 
cently have set forth the purpose of education 
in the following striking phrases: "education 
for efficiency," "to fit men to deal with the 
affairs of life," "to assert individual capacity in 
terms of rational activity," "to equip the indi- 
vidual for life," "to train citizens for citizen- 
ship." 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

It is interesting to note that the dominant 
conception of religion also has to do with life. 
Creeds and theologies, ceremonies and rituals 
are instruments for the promotion of a deeper 
spiritual life. Religion rejoices in the largest 
life. Its deepest purpose breathes in the words 
of the Master: "I came that they might have 
life, and have it more abundantly." As Jesus 
conceives it, religion is life in and by the will 
of God. It is the union of the personal will 
with the will of God. 

Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
Our wills are ours, to make them thine. 

Jesus looked upon the laws of nature as expres- 
sions of the will of God. So, when he taught 
men to pray, "Thy will be done," he set them 
on the highway to the discovery of truth. The 
determination to do the will of God opens 
the eyes of the understanding, sweeps away 
sophistries, and clears the judgment. The in- 
tellectual processes of a bad man are not re- 
liable. "Blessed are the pure in heart; for 
they shall see" is a beautiful beatitude of the 
intellectual life as well as of the religious. 
44 



RELIGION IN EDUCATION 

There is a most valuable educational principle 
in the Master's declaration: "As I hear I judge; 
my judgment is righteous, because I seek not 
mine own will, but the will of him that sent 
me"; "If any man will to do his will, he shall 
know of the teaching." The fullest discovery 
of knowledge waits upon our determination to 
be utterly faithful to the present light. If, 
then, religion is interpreted not in terms of 
doctrine or of emotion; if it is not chiefly a 
matter of ritual or of rule, but rather of life, it 
is linked inseparably with all true education. 
Education and religion are united in one supreme 
task. Education seeks to discover the laws 
of the world and of one's own being; religion 
seeks to enthrone the will of God as the very 
essence of life. To find oneself and the possi- 
bilities of one's world is the aim of all educa- 
tion. And this discovery is never so certain 
as when we pray to God reverently and joy- 
fully, "Father, thy will be done." 

But to be more specific, what has religion to 
do with a man's education? First of all, it will 
carry the aims of education up to completeness. 
As was set forth in the previous chapter, intel- 

45 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

lectual culture alone fails to realize the ideals 
of character or to perform the tasks of con- 
duct. Education gives one fullest possession of 
his powers; religion must give self-mastery. 
Education makes for the mastery of situations; 
religion keeps dominant the spirit of unselfish- 
ness. Education makes life larger and stronger; 
religion makes it deeper in meaning and more 
satisfying. If the final aim of education is not 
culture for its own sake, but for the sake of 
living the largest and most worth-while life, 
learning reaches its goal only by the help of 
religion. Why? Because the effectiveness of 
life depends not alone upon capacity, but also 
upon character; not alone upon power, but also 
upon motive; not alone upon light, but also 
upon leading. 

Again, religion is indispensable to the edu- 
cated man in giving to life a spiritual meaning. 
Science has told us how the earth was made, 
but not what it was made for. Learning has 
disclosed the secrets of the human body, but 
it has no word concerning the destiny of human 
life. The scholars have written the history of 
the human race, but they have not measured 
46 



RELIGION IN EDUCATION 

the spiritual value of man's life. The only 
rational interpretation of these deeper prob- 
lems of our life is to be found in religious faith. 
What avails it for men to increase their wealth, 
and multiply inventions, and master material 
forces, if these things are not shot through and 
through with spiritual meaning and purpose? 
There is a realm of spiritual life close to us. 
There are invisible realities which we may 
know. There are voices which speak to an 
inner sense messages of cheer and strength. 
The Bible, with its tides of spiritual life, meets 
the deepest instincts of the human heart. 
"Man cannot live by bread alone." There are 
wants deeper than those of the physical senses. 
Man's inmost nature cries out for the living 
God. Keener than the cravings of hunger and 
thirst is the soul's sense of the Eternal. Now 
it is because religion meets life's deepest ques- 
tions with an answer, and its inmost cravings 
with satisfaction, that it brings to the man of 
culture life indeed. Professor Eucken has well 
said, "Not suffering but spiritual destitution is 
man's worst enemy." The greatest problem of 
society is not to multiply riches and comforts, 
47 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

and cities and institutions, not to produce art 
and literature, but to enrich and transform life 
with faith and hope and love. That is the task 
of religion. 

It is becoming increasingly evident that these 
deeper needs of life can be met only as the insti- 
tutions of society are developed. The institu- 
tions upon which civilization must depend for 
its ideals and moral force are the home, the 
church, and the state. This trinity guards and 
fosters the most precious things in human life. 
The efficiency of any one of these divinely or- 
dained institutions of society depends upon the 
moral ideals and the spiritual force of religion. 
The home is jeopardized by the tragedies of 
lust and crime unless it is rilled with the sweet 
influences of religion. The state will become 
corrupt, and civilization coarse and vulgar, 
unless there is a divine life permeating their 
whole being. Education alone cannot save 
the institutions of the nation from decay and 
destruction. Education must have a moral 
dynamic at the heart of it. 

From still another viewpoint we may see the 
vital relation of religion and education. Reli- 



RELIGION IN EDUCATION 

gion alone can save men from the peril of their 
success. No severer test comes to the indi- 
vidual and nation than comes in prosperity. It 
was no mere religious truism that Jesus uttered 
when he said, "How hardly shall they which 
have riches enter into the kingdom of God!" 
The disclosures of recent years have empha- 
sized the magnitude of the perils of wealth 
both to individual and to national life. Our 
prodigious national prosperity is the product of 
our science. And this vast power is a good 
beyond doubt, if it is used for high service, 
if it is consecrated to noble ends. But if our 
gigantic material interests are not dominated 
by great spiritual ideals and enterprises, then 
our wealth becomes our tilth. 

An American editor makes this keen arraign- 
ment of our national life: "That we are passing 
through a great moral crisis becomes every day 
more clear. That crisis has come not a day too 
soon, if the soul of the country is to be kept 
alive; it cannot be too severe in its arraignment 
of baseness, too thorough in the punishment it 
inflicts, too drastic in the methods of cleansing 
and reinvigorating which it adopts. There has 

49 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

never been a more shocking story of dishonor 
told among any people, nor one which makes 
the reader or hearer more indignant or ashamed. 
In whatever direction the light searches, in- 
stantly mean little men of great financial posi- 
tion come into startling light, and are seen 
managing affairs with great financial ability, 
but with the moral ideas of semi-savages. An 
undeniable moral vulgarity stamps them as 
men of large brains and little souls; capable of 
great material achievements, but with rudi- 
mentary spiritual development. On this group 
of betrayers of trusts the great mass of Amer- 
icans looked first with incredulity, then with 
astonishment, and lastly with deepening indig- 
nation. Sound at heart, but dull with pros- 
perity, and overtaken by a kind of moral 
sleeping sickness, the nation opens its eyes, 
looks about with dismay, and gathers its forces 
for a passionate fight against the vices that 
have brought shame and disaster to it." The 
only hope of saving the nation from its vices 
is in religion. Exposure and denunciation will 
not do it. Campaigns of instruction and agita- 
tion will lay the ax at the root of hoary evils, 
50 



RELIGION IN EDUCATION 

but society can be redeemed only by planting 
the seed of the new life. 

In George Washington's Farewell Address he 
utters a truth never more timely than now: 
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead 
to political prosperity religion and morality are 
indispensable supporters. Let us with caution 
indulge the supposition that morality can be 
maintained without religion. Whatever may be 
conceded to the influence of refined education on 
minds of peculiar structure, reason and ex- 
perience both forbid us to expect that rational 
morality can prevail in exclusion of religious 
principles." In our enthusiasm for education, 
if the religious training of our youth is withheld, 
the home is imperiled, the church is doomed to 
decline, and the foundations of the nation are 
shaken. God is not an elective. Religion is 
indispensable. Reverence for law, obedience to 
conscience, the recognition of God in history 
and in nature, the place of Christ in civilization, 
the value of the Bible for literature and for life 
— these things are far more vital to good citi- 
zenship and to the permanence and peace of 
the nation than any scientific formula. Presi- 

51 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

dent Faunce has said, "The Bible has performed 
in modern times a vastly greater service than 
the entire classical literature of the Greeks and 
Romans." If this be true, the prevailing neglect 
of religious instruction both in the home and 
in the school is alarming. No one who knows 
the place of the Bible in the history of civiliza- 
tion and the influence of religion upon intel- 
lectual progress will ever think lightly of 
religion. 

Let the youth of the nation seek skill in the 
arts and trades; let them master the sciences, 
and always in the quest of the largest life; 
let the capacity of the mind be developed to 
the utmost. But let the young men and 
women never forget that learning finds its 
fulfillment in unselfish service, and that reli- 
gion alone will guide and keep life forever 
in purity and in strength. 



VI 



THE GROWING MIND AND THE 
CHRISTIAN IDEAL 

THE wonder of modern times is the increase 
of knowledge. Every day the adventur- 
ous mind of man announces some new discovery. 
The sciences are multiplying their treasures with 
bewildering profusion. A superficial survey of 
scientific progress during the past half century 
reveals new worlds of knowledge whose exist- 
ence was not dreamed of. But the greatest 
wonder is not the startling discoveries, it is 
the daring discoverer; not the accumulation of 
knowledge, but the growing mind. Important 
as are the achievements of learning for the 
practical uses of life, the fact of supreme im- 
portance is that by the increase of knowledge 
the intellect develops unsuspected powers. It 
is worth while to add to the treasures of the 
53 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

arts and sciences, but it is really more worth 
while to increase the mind's capacity to think 
and to know. And the glory of all true educa- 
tion is that it meets life's problems with a 
clearer insight, with a more unerring judgment, 
and with the larger outlook. The eager mind 
discovers some new truth to-day, and to- 
morrow, larger in capacity and keener in zest, 
it pushes out into wider fields in quest of more 
truth. Goethe's dying cry, "Light, more light!" 
is only the prayer of an earnest soul growing 
forever in its appreciation and grasp of the 
truth. This spirit of intellectual pioneering is 
the dominant characteristic of modern educa- 
tion. The belief that truth can be found, and 
that it is to be sought at any sacrifice, is 
driving men in every field of knowledge into 
earnest, heroic quest of the truth. There is no 
tale of heroism on the seas more thrilling than 
the stories of men in medical science literally 
laying down their lives to discover the secret 
for the conquest of some disease. 

Now, this same spirit, believing that truth 
can be known, and that the truth is for life, 
and that the truth is to grow from more to 
54 



THE GROWING MIND 

more, is the very heart of the Christian ideal. 
Jesus again and again startled his wondering 
disciples by the announcement: "Greater things 
than these shall you do." "I have yet many 
things to say unto you." In other words, the 
Christian ideal of life is a growing revelation of 
God; it is an ever-increasing development of 
spiritual capacity; it is going from strength to 
strength until we appear before God. 

Does not this fact of the growing mind, 
matched by the enlarging ideal of the Christian 
life, give a new significance both to our intel- 
lectual progress and to our religious problems? 
We get into religious troubles if the mind be- 
comes stagnant. On the other hand, if the 
intellectual powers become masterful and faith 
is weak and sickly, life loses its strength and 
peace. This is the point of view of that ad- 
mirable little book of Bishop William F. Mc- 
Dowell on The Religion of a Man. A growing 
mind and an increasing faith are the essential 
elements of the religion of a man. But a one- 
sided intellectual development presents one of 
the problems of personal religion. Faith is 
often cast aside in the hasty conclusion that 

55 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

religion has been discredited by the advance 
of learning. The difficulty is a man's trying to 
get along with a child's faith. The Christian 
ideal of life is not something set and stationary. 
Christian truth is not a definite deposit once 
and for all delivered to the saints, unchanging 
and unmodified by the growth of moral per- 
ception and intellectual outlook. As the mind 
grows faith must grow. Men must just as 
certainly put away childish things in religion 
as in play. 

A graduate student in an American univer- 
sity said with a deep pathos in his voice: "I 
do not believe anything any more. If I only 
had the faith of my childhood!" But the faith 
of his childhood was intellectually impossible 
to him, and it would have been just as inade- 
quate as impossible. The root of this young 
man's difficulty was this: his mind had been 
busy with the teachings of science and of 
philosophy for half a dozen years, and he had 
neglected the proper feeding of his spiritual 
nature. He was thinking with a man's mind 
of the things of science, and with a child's 
conception of the things of religion. He was 
56 



THE GROWING MIND 

bringing his childhood conceptions of God and 
of prayer and of the Bible to the problems and 
tasks of a man. And out of this came his 
spiritual despair. He had not lost faith. But 
his intellectual conceptions of religious things 
were not satisfying. 

Is not this the explanation of much of the 
alleged doubt of our time? Men must put away 
childish things. It is natural and normal in 
childhood to think as a child, but in manhood 
childish things must be put away. A child's 
faith is beautiful for a child, but it will not do 
for a man. The child's joy in play and in the 
home is beautiful, but the growing powers of a 
man demand the tasks and the pleasures of a 
larger world. How may the man, bewildered 
by intellectual doubts, regain his faith? Can 
the student of the sciences and the philosophies 
get back his Bible, his confidence in prayer, and 
his faith in God? He can if he is given a man's 
faith instead of a child's. He needs a man's 
faith, a man's God, a man's Bible, a man's 
task. He may believe in the religious authority 
of the Bible vindicated in his own experience, 
just as the mariner believes in his sextant and 
57 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

the astronomer in his telescope. He needs a 
church that is doing something more than 
ministering to spiritual foundlings, that is doing 
something more than feeding its own emotions 
by its altar sacrifices. He needs a church that 
sets for him a task big enough to call forth the 
heroism and the self-sacrifice of the manliest 
souls. He needs a God as much greater than 
the God of his childhood as the capacity and 
need of a man are greater than the need and 
capacity of a child. Professor William James 
once said, "The modern world needs a moral 
equivalent for war." Some heroic thing to be 
done, some heavy burden to be borne, some 
great sacrifice to be made, some gigantic evil 
to be overcome call for a faith that is large and 
ever growing larger. If thinking men would 
save their faith, they only need to recognize 
the fact that the Christian ideal must grow 
to meet the needs of the growing mind. To 
become a master in science will not make a 
religious doubter if there is a corresponding 
growth in one's conception of spiritual things. 
If the scholar becomes a skeptic, it does not 
mean that something is wanting intellectually 
58 



THE GROWING MIND 

in the matters of faith. In most cases it means 
that the mind has been fed while the spiritual 
nature has been starved. 

Furthermore, it is heartening to the Christian 
believer to discover that the scholar has not 
really lost faith in God, but only in his child- 
hood or traditional thought of God. He does 
not deny the truth of the Bible; he doubts his 
childhood interpretations of the Bible. He still 
believes in prayer, but not in all prayers. 
When the deep, universal needs of human life 
reassert themselves men cry out for "the evi- 
dence of things not seen." 

Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter, 
Churches change, forms perish, systems go, 

But our human needs they will not alter, 
Christ no after age shall e'er outgrow. 

Christ is not outgrown, but some of our con- 
ceptions of him are outgrown. A man's reli- 
gion for a man's task; a man's Bible for a man's 
world — a growing man and an ever-growing 
revelation of God — is not this our supreme 
need? Yonder in the green fields of childhood 
is the God of little children. Lo! here in the 
59 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

gloom and struggle of the street is the great 
God of men! 

If the contention of this chapter is true, 
faith has nothing to fear from the growth of 
knowledge. On the other hand, learning need 
never be ashamed to confess faith. Open- 
minded, courageous pursuit of truth will ulti- 
mately lead to Christ as its goal. The Christian 
ideals need perpetually the new interpretation 
and fresh embodiment which will be given only 
by growing minds. While the growing mind is 
creating new sciences, and commanding new 
forces, and investing the world with new mean- 
ings, it must ever be pressing forward toward 
the mark for the prize of life's highest calling 
in Jesus Christ. 



60 



VII 

INTELLECTUAL HONESTY 

" A SQUARE deal" and "Fair Play" are 
xV the slogans of the day. They indicate 
the trend of popular thinking. Fairness in deal- 
ing and truthfulness in speaking are high moral 
obligations which have come to be recognized 
as fundamental in all the activities of civilized 
society. But this popular demand for honesty 
is often superficial. There can be no guarantee 
of honor in conduct unless there is honesty in 
thought. The first demand, therefore, which re- 
ligion makes of the mind is honesty in one's 
thinking. "Whatsoever things are true, think 
on these things." 

The most outstanding characteristic of the 
Bible is its absolute fidelity to the facts of life. 
Open the Old Book where you will, and you 
find a cross-section of human life. The events 

61 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

which are recorded are presented in a plain, 
simple narrative, and are never arranged for 
dramatic effect. Its characters never pose. Its 
heroes and saints are men with temptations and 
struggles like our own. The utter intellectual 
honesty of the Bible in portraying the expe- 
riences of men who are dealing with God is 
the hall-mark of its inspiration. 

In the character of Jesus this trait of intel- 
lectual honesty is even more conspicuous. It 
was the background of all the other elements of 
his personality which made him so divinely fair. 
He had a passion for reality. He has much to 
say about the truth — believing the truth, know- 
ing the truth, and living the truth. His whole 
soul seemed in revolt at sham of any kind. His 
denunciation of the Pharisees is an unsparing 
arraignment of pretense and unreality. He 
struck straight at the evils of his time. He 
never juggled with words nor temporized with 
moral issues. Jesus shows the same high 
quality of intellectual sincerity in dealing with 
his disciples. He wanted followers, but he 
never painted the life of discipleship in rosy 
colors to win men. He spoke plainly of the 
62 



INTELLECTUAL HONESTY 

hardships and persecutions which were to be 
the lot of the builders of the Kingdom. He 
always set the cross in the foreground. He was 
so utterly candid in dealing with men that he 
would not allow a rich man of noble character 
to become a disciple without facing squarely the 
responsibilities of discipleship. He deliberately 
scattered the crowds by the mystery of his 
teachings, rather than allow them to build their 
hopes upon a false conception of his mission. 

This passion for reality is not only the work- 
ing principle of the Christian faith, it is also 
the dominant characteristic of modern learning. 
Science makes a relentless quest for facts. 
The man of science approaches every problem 
of life with one question — "What are the facts?" 
He is willing to revise his theories, or to re- 
nounce former creeds and to accept new ones, 
if the discovery of facts demands it. And in 
this utter fidelity to facts both science and 
religion agree. 

There is no more hopeful omen of moral and 
social progress than this burning passion for 
reality everywhere. If science is sometimes ar- 
rogant in its claims, the scientific spirit is pre- 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

paring the way for the coming of the Lord by 
its tremendous emphasis upon reality. If there 
is a dearth of religious enthusiasm to-day, there 
is a mighty insistence that religion shall be 
genuine and that life shall ring true. 

What does intellectual honesty demand? 
First of all, it insists that there is an everlasting 
distinction between truth and error. It also 
insists that the truth can be known, and that 
men are to be judged by the way they use the 
truth. Furthermore, intellectual honesty de- 
mands fidelity to one's own thinking. It will 
not tolerate verbal jugglery for the support of 
a pet theory, nor pious mouthing with no 
reality in experience. The frank determination 
to see things and to report things as they are 
is the very essence of intellectual honesty. 

The lack of intellectual honesty is nowhere 
more apparent than in the handling of political 
issues. The rule of the demagogue would be 
short-lived if the citizen approached civic prob- 
lems with utter open-mindedness. The greatest 
barrier to good government is a lack of intel- 
lectual candor in meeting the problems of the 
state. 

64 



INTELLECTUAL HONESTY 

Men come to the Bible in the same partisan 
spirit. They have some theory to support, or 
some doctrine to prove, instead of seeking for 
the teaching of the Bible regardless of what 
becomes of their personal views. It is abso- 
lutely fatal to true religious character to make 
doctrines an end in themselves. The true dis- 
ciple goes to the Bible, not with the real issue 
prejudged, but with the prayer, "Teach me thy 
truth; show me thy way, O God." And if the 
discovery of new truth demands it, he must be 
ready to change his beliefs any day. The 
general break-up in religious beliefs at the 
present time is an indication, not of mental 
instability, but, rather, of an open-mindedness 
and an enthusiasm for the truth which is the 
very soul of religious progress. 

Intellectual honesty demands also that we 
live out in conduct the truth we believe. Our 
thinking on any subject is of little consequence 
unless we are willing to act upon our conclu- 
sions. What one thinks soon becomes an im- 
pertinence unless he acts. The empty pretense 
of feeding religious emotions that do not issue in 
moral conduct is the shame of religion and the 
65 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

break-down of character. The scandal of reli- 
gion is that Christian believers often feed the 
deepest emotions on the soul, and then allow 
their energy to be dissipated in singing the 
"Glory Song" or indulging other spiritual ecsta- 
sies. The inner stirrings of our holy faith 
ought not to be despised or repressed. They 
are to the human will what steam is to the 
machinery. But they must be harnessed to 
serious tasks; they must be given worthy work 
to do. Every generation of religious believers 
needs to be stirred by the spirit of the Hebrew 
prophets. Their appeal is for reality. They 
heap a withering scorn upon ceremonialism, 
upon rites and prayers, and upon all machinery 
of religion that does not link itself closely to 
the tasks of life. 

What then follows? Manifestly, this: The 
importance of a man's thinking depends upon 
its candor. The accuracy of one's thought 
processes cannot be trusted unless he is domi- 
nated at every step by a determination to know 
things as they really are. Intellectual keenness 
alone cannot frame a sound policy for the state 
or a true doctrine of religion. Sincerity in 

66 



INTELLECTUAL HONESTY 

thinking is at the bottom of personal character 
and of all noble moral endeavor. In no other 
way than by the absolute soundness of the 
inner spirit can truth and righteousness prevail. 
But the Christian faith has nothing to fear 
so long as men accept the intellectual and 
moral challenge of Christ, "Come and see." 
President King, of Oberlin College, has well 
said, "Truth is not truth until it has been 
earned." And if this is true, the highest 
obligation of the Christian mind is to face 
the facts, to work over and to assimilate truth 
from whatever quarter it comes and thus 
make it our very own. The supreme achieve- 
ment both of education and of religion is the 
possession of guiding ideals and dominant con- 
victions. When young people stand upon the 
threshold of life's undertakings the questions 
with which to greet them are not: "Have you 
a diploma?" "What is your wealth?" "What 
is your vocation?" These are important, but 
a thousandfold more important is it to ask: 
"Have you any ideals that are your own? 
Have you any convictions for which you would 
die before you would surrender them? Have 

67 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

you a mission in the world which puts upon 
you a mighty compulsion? Have you any 
burning indignations, and fiery enthusiasms 
which stir you to the very center of your being?" 
If so, rejoice, O young man! These are your 
strength. 






68 



VIII 
THE RELIGION OF THE MIND 

THE climax of the great commandment is, 
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy mind." What do we mean by the reli- 
gion of the mind? The phrase has a strange 
and unnatural sound. The religion of the heart 
we know. But is there some reality in human 
experience for which the subject of this chapter 
stands? "Loving God with the mind" — what 
can that mean? The mind investigates and 
forms judgments and discovers truth. It is 
not easy to think of the mind as loving. And 
yet, unfamiliar as may be the phrase "loving 
with the mind," it stands for something vital 
in our experience. Love does not belong to the 
emotional nature alone. 

There is such a thing as the affection of the 
mind. For example, analyze our love for the 

69 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

old home. The imagination fondly pictures the 
house in which we lived, the lawn, the trees 
and brooks. All the surroundings of the child- 
hood home take hold upon our sentiment. The 
memory of these early associations is an un- 
failing fountain of delight. The thought of the 
sacrifice and noble character of father and 
mother stirs the soul and it pours forth its 
grateful love. But the home appeals to another 
part of our nature. It invites thought. The 
buildings must be cared for, grounds must be 
kept, instruction and training must be provided 
for the children; the aged must be given com- 
fort and happiness. The home has a multitude 
of interests which the mind must serve by 
hard, sober thinking. What will minister to 
the higher life of the home? What books, what 
art, what amusements, what associations will 
realize for the family the noblest ideals of the 
home? No one loves his home genuinely until 
his mind grapples with these questions seriously. 
Is not the same true of patriotism? Love of 
country is a fine sentiment. The heart of every 
normal man beats a little faster at the sight of 
the fields and rivers, the lakes and mountains of 
70 



THE RELIGION OF THE MIND 

his own land, as he says, "This is my own, my 
native land." But deeper than this feeling of 
delight is the patriot's admiration of the insti- 
tutions and opportunities of his native land. 
When he reads the history and enters into the 
struggles of the nation, and undertakes to solve 
its problems, it is then that he genuinely loves 
his country with the mind. Whatever else it 
may be, patriotism is loving one's country with 
the mind. 

There is likewise a love of the mind for God. 
This great commandment says to men: "You 
owe to God something more than gratitude for 
his mercies, and reverence for his character, and 
obedience to his will. Search out the truth 
which he has revealed. Find out his ways; 
try to understand him. Your hymns of praise 
and adoration are not enough; give him the 
earnest thoughts of your minds." This con- 
ception of religion makes it a larger and a 
nobler thing. It is not chiefly a bit of devout 
sentiment or ecstatic feeling, or even benevolent 
endeavor. It is heart and soul and mind — the 
whole man — bowing in allegiance at the feet of 
God. There are no outlying districts of human 

71 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

nature unclaimed by the Lord of life. And the 
crowning act of allegiance to God is loving him 
with all the mind. 

But this is not the popular idea of religion. 
In the minds of many the domain of religion 
is limited to the moral duties and spiritual 
experiences of men. The things of religion are 
shut up as in so many tight compartments, 
while the tasks of the intellect are relegated to 
the secular. In spite, however, of a crude 
psychology and a vicious theology partitioning 
life into the sacred and secular, the clamorous 
wants of men and the voice of the Bible call 
for a religion that has in it mind. One cannot 
be truly religious unless he loves God with the 
mind. The Christian's intellect is not shackled. 
To become a Christian does not mean that 
reason is to be either vacated or flouted. The 
Christian ideal is to make the mind clear and 
strong while the heart perpetually soars up to 
do with the things that are eternal. 

There are two considerations which enforce 

the command to love God with the mind. 

First, it is the mind's love for God which gives 

vitality and efficiency to religious character. 

72 






THE RELIGION OF THE MIND 

Unless the mind feeds upon the great truths of 
our holy faith the emotions of religion soon die 
out. The truths of the Bible — the Fatherhood 
of God, the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the de- 
structiveness of sin, the glory of immortality — 
these are the fuel which have kept burning the 
mighty enthusiasms of Christianity. Not till a 
man's mind takes hold of the fact of his respon- 
sibility to Almighty God does he take up 
earnestly the moral duties of life. When we 
leap to the sublime conviction that Jesus 
Christ is the Son of God we are ready to take 
upon our hands the tasks of the Kingdom. If 
the mind strongly lays hold upon the truth 
of immortality, we have the mightiest inspira- 
tion for holy and courageous living. It is a 
false reverence which shuts the mysteries of 
religion out of the region of fearless, earnest 
thinking. Some are afraid to bring the teach- 
ings of religion to the test of a searching intel- 
lectual investigation. When the doctrine of 
evolution was first proclaimed by the scientist 
some feared the faith of the Bible was imperiled. 
Still others dare not raise questions as to when 
and how the Bible was written, and as to its 
73 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

literary form, and its use, lest its truths may 
be jeopardized. What a mistake! If the Bible 
cannot stand the brightest light which the 
intellect can turn upon it, it is not good enough 
for the heart and soul. And no religion will 
long survive and serve effectively the deep 
needs of life that does not treat the sacred 
things of life with intellectual honesty. Now, 
it is this unwarranted fear that the Christian 
faith cannot bear the searchlight of the intellect 
that is responsible for much of the prevailing 
skepticism. Sober and reverent thinking upon 
the moral duties of life will bring a new day 
for the things of the spirit. 

But this does not mean that men by their 
wisdom are to find out God. The mysteries of 
spiritual life are not disclosed by intellectual 
searching alone. The methods of the expert 
in psychology or of the scientific laboratory 
will not open to us the secret of conversion and 
of peace with God. Nevertheless, the great 
problems in life are not to be dodged in our 
thinking. Faith is never so secure as when 
the mind faces reverently but fearlessly the 
mysteries of God in the world, trying to under- 
74 



THE RELIGION OF THE MIND 

stand their meaning. Mere busyness in doing 
good is not enough. The contempt for the 
doctrines of Christianity which leads one to 
say, "Never mind what you believe, whether 
you believe anything or not; come and let us 
do a lot of good," is most superficial. Men will 
not stay by their duty till the end unless they 
are sustained in their enthusiasm by the mighty 
beliefs of religion, and these fundamental Chris- 
tian beliefs ground upon intellectual convic- 
tions. The religion of the mind, therefore, 
makes vital and permanent the religion of the 
heart. 

There is a second consideration. The works 
of Christ claim the highest energies of the 
mind. The moral and spiritual tasks of the 
church are at bottom intellectual problems. If 
some duty is to be done, it is mere cant to talk 
of praying our way through, expecting an 
answer to prayer to relieve us of the responsi- 
bility of sober thought. The poverty of society 
must be challenged by Christianity. But by 
what means is the poverty to be cured? Men 
ought to confess Christ, but by what kind of 
confession? Men must be won to discipleship, 
75 j 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

but how are converts to be made? Gigantic 
evils are to be overthrown; but what means 
will be successful? The young life of the 
community must be claimed for the Kingdom, 
but what sort of teaching and training will be 
most effective? Men ought to worship God, 
but how are adoration and devotion to be ex- 
pressed? All these are questions with which 
the mind must grapple. In the presence of 
the hard things to be done in the saving of 
the world there is a deal of lazy indifference 
which assumes the name of piety. If a be- 
setting sin is to be overcome, prayer without 
honest thinking will avail little. No amount of 
prayer will correct the moral standards of one 
who is self-indulgent. Worship will not cure a 
mean man of stinginess. He must see the dis- 
proportion between his income and his giving. 
The problem of higher personal conduct and 
of better society can be solved only by an 
"acute perception of the difference between 
right and wrong, a clear conception of duty, 
and an appreciation of the solemn obligations 
of a trust." The great enterprises of the 
Kingdom wait for men who love God with all 
76 



THE RELIGION OF THE MIND 

the heart and with all the soul and with all the 
mind. 

Henceforth, O God, let me love thee with all 
my mind! 



77 



IX 

EDUCATION AND VISION 

THERE is a splendid phrase in the writings 
of Saint Paul which suggests a good work- 
ing definition of Christian Education — "The 
eyes of their understanding were lightened." 
The mind is the seeing faculty of the soul. Its 
chief function, like that of the eyes, is to see. 
But accurate, discriminating sight depends upon 
training the eye and judgment in determining 
the color, the quality, and the location of a 
thing. 

There is a popular demand everywhere to-day 
for trained leaders. Vision makes leadership, 
and leadership is the hope of democracy. It is 
a false theory of democracy that depreciates 
the value of educated leadership. The voice of 
the people is the voice of God only when the 
judgment of the people is instructed and guided 
78 



EDUCATION AND VISION 

by men of high ideals and clear vision. The 
popular mind has an instinct for the right, but 
it must be guided. It needs a discriminating 
foresight, else it is blind and unreliable. James 
Russell Lowell was right: "In the long run the 
judgment of the plain people is reliable." But 
in the short run their judgment is not trust- 
worthy. The great questions of government 
and of religion can be handled wisely by the 
common people only when they have the in- 
struction and guidance of good men as leaders. 
A leader is one who interprets the people to 
themselves, and the power to interpret the 
mind and the heart of the people to themselves 
belongs only to the men of vision. Democracy 
imperatively needs such leadership. Without it 
democracy becomes a mob. What fits men for 
leadership among their fellows? Not goodness 
alone, not learning alone. Something more in- 
tellectual and spiritual and virile than either 
piety or learning — the power to see and to 
make others see. According to George Adam 
Smith, the vision of the Hebrew prophet was 
the power of forming an ideal, or seeing the 
possibilities in a thing, the power to discrim- 

79 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

inate between what is true and false, and also 
to discern the consequences of conduct and the 
future trend of events. In every age the leader 
has these three powers: the power of forming 
an ideal, the power to see the everlasting dif- 
ference between right and wrong, and the power 
to discover the will and the way of God among 
men. 

The classical illustration of the power of 
vision is the well-known story of Moses. He 
was a prosperous shepherd in Midian. To 
Moses the burning bush which he saw became 
vocal with a divine message. To the people 
of Midian who passed by this was only an 
ordinary bush. Moses saw a meaning in the 
bush which was hidden from other eyes. The 
eyes of his understanding were lightened. He 
saw yonder on the banks of the Nile his own 
people with their higher life being crushed out 
by intolerable industrial wrongs. He saw in 
them a capacity for moral leadership and 
spiritual idealism. He had a vision of the 
sympathy of the divine Hand outstretched in 
wonder-working power for the deliverance of 
his people. For Moses, the horizon of the 
80 



EDUCATION AND VISION 

centuries was pushed back, and he saw the 
glory of a spiritual empire which was hidden 
from other eyes. 

It is this power to see the invisible things of 
life which gives creative ability of every sort. 
The richness and the promise of life are bound 
up intimately with the power of vision. It is 
the quality of spiritual vision which determines 
the direction and the success of every human 
life. The difference between the youth who is 
seeking an education and the scores who are 
enjoying the pleasures of the day is, one has a 
vision of the future, while the other sees only 
the present. There is no higher form of faith 
than that of the young man or woman who is 
forsaking the pleasures of the present for the 
higher joys and achievements of the future. 

This same power of vision is the secret of 
business success. In the world of trade and of 
industry one man lives from hand to mouth, 
while another capitalizes the present, doing 
business to-day in the light of the economic 
principles which reach far out into the future. 
The same law is illustrated also in the field of 
invention. Every great inventor sees how the 

81 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

material needs of life can be met by the mastery 
of the forces of nature. The difference between 
the Wright Brothers, of the city of Dayton, 
and a hundred other mechanics working with 
the same steel and wood, was, the Wright 
Brothers saw a vision of men flying through the 
air. 

We see the same principle operative in the 
history of races as well as of individuals. The 
American Indian lived only for the present. 
He roamed the forests and fields, fished in the 
streams, and gathered the fruits of the land, 
unmindful of the future. The white man lived 
for the future. He cleared the forests, broke 
the prairies, built homes, and founded schools 
and churches. He constructed highways and 
laid the foundation of vast empires of wealth 
and civilization. He supplanted the Indian by 
his vision of the future. He said, "I will look 
out for the generations to come." The result 
was, the race that lived from hand to mouth, 
like Esau, caring chiefly for to-day's mess, was 
driven before the face of the white man. Sec- 
retary Shaw, of Iowa, once said, "There is a 
divine fiat which decrees that the race that 



EDUCATION AND VISION 

will not civilize must get off the earth.' ' The 
driving out of the Indian from the plains and 
forests of America was more the working out 
of this divine principle than the ruthless cruelty 
of the white man's greed and extortion. Ben- 
jamin Kidd, in a remarkable book, The Prin- 
ciples of Western Civilization, explains the 
growing power of the Western nations. He 
declares that the Oriental nations root their 
civilization in the past, that their peoples are 
always looking backward, hence there is no 
progress. The second stage in the world's 
civilization was marked by the secularists or the 
utilitarians, who built up a civilization on the 
present. Present interest, present happiness, 
present strength were the ideals of the utili- 
tarian. Mr. Kidd contends that Western civili- 
zation did not accept either the view of the 
secularist or of the Oriental. Instead of basing 
civilization in the past, or in the present, the 
Western nations rooted their civilization in the 
future. The thing which characterizes the 
Western nations is faith. Their eye is upon 
the future, not upon the past or upon the 
present. What Mr. Kidd calls the "principle 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

of projected efficiency" in the Bible is called 
faith. And it is this vision of the future that 
explains the forward leaps of Western civiliza- 
tion. The Proverb writer of the Old Testa- 
ment puts it in these graphic words: "Where 
there is no vision the people perish," or "be- 
come a mob." 

The mind must be enlightened in order to 
see accurately and reliably. To give this train- 
ing in mind enlightenment is the high task of ed- 
ucation. True education aims to lead forth or to 
unfold the powers of the higher life. To educate 
is to lead forth and to line up for efficient action 
the inherent powers of the human soul. The old 
conception of education as a cramming process, 
or the filling of a mental vacuum with facts 
and information, is both crude and unworkable. 
Of course the schools must sharpen the tools 
with which men are to do the world's work. 
They must impart technical knowledge and 
mechanical skill. But of far greater impor- 
tance is guiding the seeing faculty of the soul. 
To give to life ideals and power to make ac- 
curate moral discriminations, to impart a noble 
sense of honor and an appreciation of God's 
84 



EDUCATION AND VISION 

working in human progress — in short, to make 
men of vision — is the chief business of Christian 
education. 

The principle of wireless telegraphy holds in 
the higher life. The wireless instrument is so 
adapted and so adjusted as to take up and 
transmit the wingless messages flying through 
vast spaces of air and ether. But the instru- 
ment will not receive and transmit the wireless 
messages until it has been constructed and 
sensitized according to a definite plan. Men 
who are to receive and interpret the divine 
messages to their fellows must be men of high 
ideals and sensitive honor. 

The crying need in all planes of our common 

life to-day is for men of vision, for educated 

leaders. In business the remedy for ruthless 

greed and cunning craft and rank dishonesty is 

in educated men who will not bury themselves, 

nor sell themselves in the superficial business 

of buying and selling things. Society needs 

men who will look upon wealth as a means of 

well-being, men who will know that they were 

not meant to be slaves of things, men who will 

know that wealth was meant to be an instru- 

85 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

ment for spiritual ends; men who "will put 
gold where it belongs, where it is in the New 
Jerusalem, a shining pavement beneath the feet, 
upon which the higher uses of life may move 
smoothly to and fro on their errands of human 
service, instead of beating it out into a firma- 
ment until it hides the sun, moon, and stars, 
aye, and the very face of God himself." Above 
all, we need men of high ideals and clear dis- 
cernment and sensitive conscience, who will al- 
ways heed the call of duty as the voice of God. 
The world waits for such leaders in business, 
in government, in religion — and everywhere. 



86 



DOES EDUCATION ENDANGER FAITH? 

THERE is no greater question confronting 
us to-day than this: How can education 
and Christian faith go on in harmony together? 
A recent college graduate gave the writer this 
personal confidence: "Since I went to college 
my faith has changed completely. I used to 
believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. 
Since my study of science and philosophy I 
believe he was only a great and good man — 
the greatest religious teacher who has ever 
lived. I still believe in the Bible, but not in 
the way I used to believe. I have not given up 
my faith entirely, but O! it is so changed." 

It is such an experience as this, which is by 
no means uncommon, that makes the question 
raised by this chapter all the more vital — "Does 

87 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

education endanger faith?" Unquestionably, 
some education does endanger faith. For ex- 
ample, the first steps in scientific studies are 
quite likely to unsettle religious beliefs. It is 
inevitable that the increase of knowledge should 
modify our childhood conceptions of religion. 
This process of readjustment of faith and 
knowledge is always a trying experience. There 
are two temptations which every earnest student 
experiences. The first is to dispute the facts of 
modern learning in the fancied interest of sav- 
ing one's faith. But this is the way of intel- 
lectual dishonesty and moral bankruptcy. The 
second temptation is hastily to abandon all 
faith out of a mistaken fidelity to the facts of 
science. This is alike unsatisfactory, for life 
must be lived. It has interests which are larger 
than the laboratory or the market. Life has 
questions which can be answered and interests 
which can be safeguarded only by a living 
faith. 

What is the way out? First, in a fearless 
recognition of the facts of science as facts. 
Nothing is to be gained by ignoring or try- 
ing to explain away undoubted scientific facts. 
88 



DOES EDUCATION ENDANGER FAITH? 

Secondly, by discriminating clearly between a 
living faith, and our interpretation of the 
teachings of religion. Now, in order to find 
the way out, holding to all that science has to 
teach reliably, and at the same time keeping 
the faith, we need to see that there must be a 
division of labor for science and religion. Each 
has its own field. To science belong such 
questions as these: What is the nature of the 
world? By what process did it come to its 
present form? What is its history? To religion 
belong questions as to the cause, and purpose 
and destiny of the world and its life. The 
chief questions are: What? When? Why? and 
Whither? When the physical sciences have 
spoken their last word in biology and geology 
and evolution, the questions as to the ultimate 
end of all things, and the meaning and purpose 
and destiny of all things, remain unanswered. 
The answers to these questions belong to reli- 
gion. The religionist, therefore, is not to de- 
spise the work of the scientist. Neither is the 
scientist to discredit the things of faith. The 
simple fact is that life is higher than laboratory 
methods or religious creeds. There is a place 
89 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

for the use of both the test tube and religious 
insight. And neither is in any way discredited 
by the findings of the other. 

Further, we are not wholly brain. There is a 
side of our nature which we call moral and 
spiritual that has unutterable longings after 
God. The proper development of the mind 
through education will not tend to suppress 
these spiritual yearnings, but, rather, to give 
them intelligent direction and expression. As 
the mind becomes clearer in its perception of 
truth, and stronger in its grasp of the facts of 
life, fanaticism disappears and religious faith is 
seen to be the irresistible outgoing of our souls 
after love and righteousness. The old Greek 
philosopher reached a view of the world which 
is essentially spiritual. And so when the intel- 
lect most truly finds itself it turns toward God. 
The Hebrew poet's thirst of soul for God is an 
expression of what is universal in human ex- 
perience. The whole human nature, intellect, 
and conscience is essentially religious. When 
the fact is recognized that religion belongs to a 
normal human experience, education, which is 
only the highest and fullest self-expression, will 
90 



DOES EDUCATION ENDANGER FAITH? 

no longer be looked upon as unfriendly to true 
religion. 

The faith of the Christian student often loses 
its ardor in the schools for another reason. 
Spiritual culture is sacrificed in the interest of 
intellectual tasks. In the new environment of 
the college or the university the early habits of 
Christian worship are sometimes abandoned. 
Sunday, like any other day, is often used for 
study. The routine of the library and the 
laboratory is given right of way. Prayer, 
Bible-reading, and public worship easily become 
matters of convenience. Religion is not aban- 
doned deliberately, but it is carelessly neglected. 
The penalty of this neglect is an inevitable loss 
of spiritual vigor and enthusiasm. 

Then, again, the atmosphere of the school 
tends to develop a critical habit of mind. This 
is but natural. The mind must be trained to 
discriminate. The open-minded student goes 
everywhere with an interrogation mark. He is 
not a caviling doubter, but a fearless inquirer. 
He insists upon evidence before belief, upon 
testing everything by laboratory methods. But 
if this habit of mind is allowed to crowd out 

91 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

the seasons of the soul for prayer and for 
spiritual culture, leanness of faith is inevitable. 
The life of devotion can be smothered by an 
exaggerated intellectualism. There are holy 
mysteries and visions of the deeper things of 
life which can be perceived only in the atmos- 
phere of reverence and obedience. Emerson 
once said: "I find a plant in my nature called 
reverence which needs to be cultivated at least 
once a week. For that reason I am a regular 
attendant upon public worship." We may have 
no satisfactory philosophy of prayer, but in 
spite of the logic of unbelief men will believe 
and pray and hope. 

Education may be made a valuable ally of 
religion. True intellectual culture prepares the 
way for the richest spiritual experiences. Ig- 
norance is everywhere the parent of super- 
stition. The advance of true learning will 
reveal the limitations of learning. The scholar 
is always the reverently modest man. He 
recognizes that life has meanings and values 
which he cannot measure. His determination 
to find the truth and to live by the truth is 
close akin to the spirit of obedience to the 
92 



DOES EDUCATION ENDANGER FAITH? 

heavenly vision. Further, education prepares 
the way for the Christian interpretation of life. 
The educated man's world, with its vast physical 
spaces and forces, with its ages on ages in 
preparation for human life, with its millen- 
niums of history and of progress, is an utter 
bewilderment without a God, who is the Cause 
and Father of all. Without the faith and hope 
of religion man loses his bearings in the world. 
The north star is no more necessary to chart 
the seas for the mariner than the Bible's view 
of the world is necessary to give to human lives 
meaning and direction and hope. To give to 
life moral impulse and spiritual purpose is 
quite as necessary for successful living as is 
sharpening the tools with which we are to 
work. 

The best refutation of the charge that educa- 
tion makes for unbelief is to see the stream of 
stalwart believers pouring forth every year 
from the schools. Thousands of the picked 
young men and women of the colleges are 
offering themselves for missionary service, for 
the Christian ministry, and for various forms 
of social service. The trend of both scientific 
93 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

and philosophic thinking in the universities is 
more pronouncedly Christian than ever before. 
There is a superficial intellectualism that sits in 
the seat of the scornful. But as learning be- 
comes more thorough it also becomes more 
reverent. There is too in institutions of learn- 
ing that make only a formal recognition of 
religion imminent danger of faith becoming 
dead. But wherever there is a frank recogni- 
tion of Christian experience as one of the facts 
of life, wherever men tie up their lives in 
loyalty to Jesus Christ as Lord and Master, 
the college is a mighty promoter of moral char- 
acter and religious faith. The highest scholar- 
ship is never hostile to true religion. They are 
mutually dependent. No one comes to the 
fullest appreciation of the reality and power of 
the spiritual life unless he cultivates an in- 
quiring love for truth everywhere. The precious 
things with which religion deals, because they 
are infinitely precious, must be illuminated and 
interpreted by the light of pure learning. There 
is no truth that is at war with any other truth 
in any part of God's universe. There is no 
truth of science or of philosophy or of history 
94 



DOES EDUCATION ENDANGER FAITH? 

that can impair the reality or the power of 
religious truth. And so religion need not fear 
the most searching investigations of scholarship, 
because all truth is of God. Scholarship dare 
not scorn religion, because religion proclaims 
truth which is vital to the most worth-while 
life. True learning does not destroy faith; it, 
rather, invigorates and reenforces it. The 
teaching of the modern sciences has placed the 
unique authority and inspiration of the Bible 
upon a securer foundation than ever before; 
it has given a new vindication to the facts of 
Christian experience; it has deepened our belief 
in the imperishable honor and worth of human 
life, and has quickened once again the ever- 
lasting hope of the race. "Learning has not 
been the foe of the spirit, but has given to our 
faith a new expression, a new interpretation, 
and a new apologetic." 

The only real danger that religion suffers 
from education is in the neglect of learning. 
Ignorant piety can never conquer the kingdoms 
of this world. Indeed, it is quite certain to 
become a nuisance. On the other hand, a false 
intellectualism does endanger faith. To neglect 
95 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

the means of spiritual culture through devotion 
to the pursuit of knowledge is to imperil faith. 
To refuse to recognize the findings of modern 
science undermines the foundations of moral 
integrity and religious character. But true 
education prepares the way of the Lord. 
Scholarship, like religion, finds its highest aim 
in meeting the needs of human life. To inter- 
pret the needs of mankind and then to serve 
these needs effectively with a reverent scholar- 
ship, and an intelligent faith — that is the 
supreme business of Christian education. 



96 



XI 

THE LIMITATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 

IT is always disquieting to discover that 
there is so much we do not know in com- 
parison with what we do know. Naturally, the 
suspicion arises that if more were known, our 
present knowledge might prove to be worth- 
less. This is especially true in matters of 
religion. The fear prevails that if we knew 
more about the Bible, its teachings might be 
discredited. If we knew more about the mys- 
teries of life, we might believe less in prayer, 
and in divine forgiveness, and in the immortal 
life. In other words, may not our knowledge 
of spiritual things be so incomplete as to render 
it untrustworthy? 

This persistent misunderstanding comes from 
the failure to recognize the fact that Chris- 
tianity is not a formal science. The facts of 
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RELIGION AND THE MIND 

religion are not to be discovered and dealt with 
like the truths of mathematics and chemistry. 
Religion is an attitude of soul. It is a way of 
life. It has to do with the experience of men 
in the actual living of life. The worth of reli- 
gion, therefore, has to be tested, not by formu- 
las, but by living life in obedience to its 
teachings. If this is true, our religion is in no 
way discredited by the fact that our knowledge 
of spiritual things is incomplete. 

The apostle Paul gives a rare insight into 
the significance of the limitations of religious 
knowledge in these words: "When I was a 
child I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I 
thought as a child; now that I have become a 
man I have put away childish things." That is, 
to childhood belong the alphabet, the toys, and 
the games; to manhood belong the tasks, the 
problems, the sciences, and civilization of men. 
The A B C's of the alphabet are not to be 
despised because they are the beginning of our 
knowledge of literature. "Two times two are 
four" is a small part of the science of mathe- 
matics, but it is a part. In childhood we know, 
but only in part. So with respect to spiritual 
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LIMITATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 

things. The childhood stage of spiritual things 
is not to be despised. We know, though it is 
only in part. 

There are three facts concerning religious 
knowledge that should always be borne in mind. 
First, there is much that is not known, yet some 
things are certain. If the believer is honest 
with himself, he frankly says, "There is much 
that I do not know." He believes in God, yet 
how little he really knows about the nature of 
God! He believes in the care of the divine 
Father for his children, but he has no philosophy 
of Providence that satisfies even himself. He 
believes in prayer, but he has no adequate 
explanation of the helpfulness of prayer. He 
believes in immortal life, but he has no knowl- 
edge of the great beyond which satisfies his 
cravings. Concerning every great doctrine of 
the Christian faith he says, "We know only 
in part, but we know." We see as in a mirror 
darkly, and yet we see. We see something, not 
ghosts, not empty nothings, they are realities. 
They are invisible things, but not unreal. The 
religious man accepts certain facts in human 
experience, such as truth and righteousness, and 

99 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

duty, and conscience, because in the living of 
life they are inescapable. These spiritual facts 
commend themselves to sane reason because 
they are known for the practical ends of living. 
There is a vast region of the unknown sur- 
rounding every great fact of spiritual ex- 
perience. We know only in part, but we know. 

We do well also to remember that incomplete 
knowledge is not peculiar to the things of the 
spirit. Multitudes are using with satisfaction 
the electric car and light who have but little 
scientific knowledge of electricity. The im- 
portant thing is to know how to find and 
utilize this unseen force in serving the intelli- 
gent ends of living. In like manner there are a 
few great religious truths which are demanded 
for strong, helpful, victorious living — such as 
God, prayer, forgiveness, immortality. We 
know in part, but "we know the grace of our 
Lord Jesus Christ." We know only in part, 
but "we know him whom we have believed." 
We know only in part, but "we know that if our 
earthly tabernacle be dissolved, we have a 
building of God." 

Again, we do well to remember that what we 
100 



LIMITATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 

do know is not discredited by what is not 
known. The persistent mistake which is made 
by many cheap critics of religion is in thinking 
that because Christianity is not fully known, 
or cannot be reduced to hard and fast scientific 
statements, its teachings are untrustworthy. 
We look through the telescope at the planet 
Mars and ask the astronomer what is known 
about Mars. He tells us the distance of the 
planet from the earth, its size, its movements, 
its atmosphere, and so forth. But, after all, 
this knowledge is incomplete. It is only a 
small part of what we want to know about the 
planet. We ask is Mars inhabited? If in- 
habited, are its inhabitants like the men and 
women on the earth? And if inhabited by 
human beings like ourselves, what is the char- 
acter of their civilization? Have they institu- 
tions of government, religion, and education like 
ours? To all such inquiries the astronomer 
makes no answer. We soon discover that what 
he really knows about Mars is very small in 
comparison with what is not known. But these 
unanswered questions in no way affect the 
reliability and value of the things that are 
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RELIGION AND THE MIND 

known. The important thing is that we know 
certain things about the heavenly bodies which 
have to do in a practical way with our life on 
the earth. The movements of the stars and 
the regularity of the seasons are in no way 
affected by the fact that our knowledge of the 
celestial worlds is so limited. So it is respect- 
ing God, duty, and human destiny. We can- 
not comprehend the nature of the Infinite God, 
but we know the new strength that comes into 
a life when the human will is brought into 
harmony with the divine will. We cannot ex- 
plain the mystery of the incarnation, but we 
find in the face of Jesus Christ an unapproached 
revelation of the mercy of God. We cannot 
explain the mystery of sorrow, but we see in 
the experience of life things working together 
for good to them that love God. The Christian 
believer reverently says: "WTiat sin and sorrow 
and death may mean, I do not know; but I 
have passed from death unto life. I know the 
peace of God which passeth understanding. I 
have entered into the life which is infinitely 
worth while." The certainty and satisfaction 
of these great spiritual experiences are in nowise 
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LIMITATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 

affected by what we do not know. The ex- 
perience of religion is not invalidated by our 
lack of complete knowledge about religion. 

There is another statement concerning the 
limitations of religious knowledge which is of 
immense practical value, namely, What we do 
know is the usable part of knowledge. All 
knowledge is more or less valuable, but the 
essential knowledge is that which is used in 
the living of life. A little child of only a few 
years bounds into the arms of his father. He 
knows but little of his father's occupation or his 
companions, or the real problems of his father's 
life. But he knows his father, and out of this 
acquaintance rises the child's beautiful confi- 
dence. Though his knowledge of his father 
may be little, what he knows is the usable part. 
Many a Christian disciple of limited theological 
knowledge finds infinite comfort in the invita- 
tion of the Master: "Come unto me, all ye that 
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest." The question of first importance is: Has 
he done it? What does one really most need 
to know in religion? That God is an Almighty 
Father, that he lives and cares for his every 
103 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

child; that man may be delivered from the 
guilt and power of sin; that human sorrow may 
be sanctified and converted into blessing; that 
the life after death inspires the life here with 
courage and hope. We do not need to com- 
prehend the mystery of the Trinity or of the 
incarnation; we do not need to know the occu- 
pation of the angels and the redeemed. These 
things would not make for courage and fortitude 
and trust. We do need to know that Infinite 
Mind is back of all things, and that Infinite 
Heart is in all things. What we know is real 
and reliable, even though it is not all. 

Now, if the above contentions are true, the 
important thing is to postpone the considera- 
tion of the nonessentials in religion and begin 
to use what we know. The moral imperative of 
living the best life we see — Jesus 's kind of life — 
is inescapable. The need of a guide and helper 
is always with us. None better than Jesus has 
ever been found. Every philosophy of prayer 
may be unsatisfactory, but there is certain help 
in prayer. Every theory of inspiration may be 
inadequate, but there is comfort and strength 
in reading the Bible. Arguments for immor- 
104 



LIMITATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 

tality may not seem conclusive, but there is 
immense advantage in facing the fact that 
what a man sows he shall also reap. All this 
we know. It is only a part, but it is the part 
supremely worth while, because it is usable and 
leads to the abundant life. 



105 



XII 
THE GOAL OF CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

AN all-round man. The phrase is not a 
scriptural one, but it happily describes 
a New Testament type of character. In his 
vigorous style the apostle Paul characterizes the 
Christian as a "full-grown man." He sees in 
the symmetrical life of the Master the ideal of 
every complete life. The New Testament por- 
trait of Jesus presents always a man of poise 
and balance. The parts of his nature were so 
symmetrically developed that it is difficult to 
characterize him. In him all the elements of 
human nature came to such normal and 
complete development that the master-minds 
and the saints of the ages adoringly cry, 
"Behold the Man!" There is a certain 
balance of human qualities which produces 
poise and symmetry of life. There is a 
certain adjustment of physical forces which re- 
sults in equilibrium. So there may be such an 
106 



THE GOAL OF CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

harmonious unfolding of one's faculties and such 
a relation of all one's powers as to make an 
all-round man. 

The final aim of both education and religion 
is to produce a fully developed, symmetrical 
manhood. The distinctive task of Christian 
culture is to reproduce the Christ-type — a "full 
grown man." In the face of this aim of Chris- 
tian education no fact of life is more evident 
than this: that, in the main, men and women 
lack symmetrical development. The average 
man is one-sided, overdeveloped in some parts 
and lacking development in others. The man 
of poise whose whole nature has grown to ma- 
turity is a rare type. A physical deformity is 
not a common spectacle, and is always an 
object of pity. But the underdevelopment or 
the overdevelopment of a physical organ is of 
small moment in comparison with an intellectual 
or spiritual deformity. No task is more diffi- 
cult, and none so important as to give har- 
monious and well-rounded development to all 
the human faculties. Indeed, it seems that 
weakness in some of the powers of the soul is 
the price which must be paid for strength in 
107 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

other faculties. For example, the nature that 
is full of enthusiasm easily runs into fanaticism. 
The temperament rich in emotion easily de- 
generates into hysteria. The practical are al- 
ways in danger of becoming prosy and dull. 
The courageous are apt to become reckless. 
The man of prudence is peculiarly tempted to 
cowardice. Originality easily passes into ec- 
centricity, and sympathy into sentiment alism. 
Even piety must guard against superstition or 
sanctimoniousness. Any quality which enters 
into strong character developed beyond a cer- 
tain limit becomes a defect. Many a vice is 
only an exaggerated virtue. And many of the 
evil characteristics of life, the ugly faults and 
failings of human nature, are the result of a 
lack of development of the good qualities. The 
beauty and effectivensss of many a life are 
marred, not by outright sin and base wicked- 
ness alone, but also by immaturity or a one- 
sided growth. How frequent the spectacle of 
one noble quality being exalted at the sacrifice 
of another, so as to result in an impaired man- 
hood. A noted preacher once said: "There are 
two young men who walk our streets, both of 
108 



THE GOAL OF CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

whom have their admirers, each of whom seems 
in some eyes to be an admirable fulfillment of 
humanity; both of whom, judged by the fullest 
judgment, are pitiable failures. One of them 
is the young student who has burned out the 
strength of his body in the midnight oil. The 
other is the young athlete who has given away 
to muscle the care and culture that were 
meant for mind. The staggering scholar and 
the stupid athlete, what failures they both are! 
What sad and helpless fragments of humanity!" 
Over against these and all other distorted and 
one-sided men we need to set the ^11-round and 
complete life of The Man. He "advanced in 
wisdom" — intellectual power; "and stature" — 
physical development; "and in the favor of 
God and men" — spiritual capacity and social 
grace, until he came to a full-orbed, symmetrical 
manhood. 

Now, it is because of the fine balance of his 
faculties that it is so difficult to characterize 
Jesus as a man. He was burning with en- 
thusiasm, but he never became fanatical. His 
great heart was throbbing with emotion, but 
he never became hysterical. His mind was 
109 



RELIGION AND THE MIND 

aglow with imagination. He saw truths and 
worlds and human possibilities hidden from 
other eyes, but he never became flighty and 
visionary. He was intensely practical and sane, 
but never prosaic and dull. He was the em- 
bodiment of noble courage, but never reckless; 
prudent, but never cowardly; original, but 
never eccentric. Out of his heart poured forth 
vast streams of human sympathy, but he never 
became sentimental. He was pious with never 
a suggestion of sanctimoniousness. He was 
profoundly religious, living constantly in close 
communion with God, but with never a trace 
of superstition. Undertake to characterize his 
temperament so as to catalogue him with other 
men, and you realize that his development was 
so symmetrical, his faculties were so finely 
balanced, that we cannot characterize him as 
being distinctly intellectual, sympathetic, ener- 
getic, emotional, nor practical. He stands in 
history as the one full-orbed, symmetrical Man. 
Note how the poise of Jesus is exhibited in his 
teaching. The words of Jesus in the New Testa- 
ment always leave one impression. They are 
the utterances of a man so complete in his de- 
110 



THE GOAL OF CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

velopment as to see the various interests of 
human life in their proportion. The Master 
always saw the big things of life as big, and the 
little things as little. He focused men's atten- 
tion upon the great things. He cries to the 
multitude: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God 
and his righteousness," and yet he is not 
indifferent to the hunger of the crowds that 
follow him. He is about to institute the me- 
morial sacrament of the Christian Church, but 
he pauses to make comfortable the tired and 
dusty feet of his disciples. He hangs a-dying 
on the cross for the world's redemption, but he 
does not fail to make provision for his mother's 
future home in the family of John. He is 
teaching men about God, human salvation, and 
eternal destiny, but he does not forget the little 
children, the heart-broken widows, the helpless 
cripples, and the beggars along the way. He 
opens men's eyes to the unspeakable glories of 
other worlds, but he will never let them forget 
that their feet are standing on the earth. The 
glory of Jesus is that he not only saw the truths 
of life, great and small, the interests of human 
life, eternal and temporal, the relations of 
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RELIGION AND THE MIND 

human life, divine and social, but he saw all 
these things in their right proportion. 

Now it is this ability to appreciate the varied 
interests of human life that is the distinction of 
Christian culture. To develop the mind may 
greatly increase one's ability to do, and to ac- 
cumulate, and to control. But a human life 
is narrow and barren unless it has developed a 
broad sympathy for men and a Christlike in- 
terest in their well-being. But stronger than 
the call of our fellows for the consecration of 
culture and character in service is the call of the 
Infinite God to communion and faith and hope. 
Our human life comes to its fulfillment only in 
God. The all-round life cannot be separated 
from the earth, nor from men, nor from God. 
It lives in the world, but is not of the world. 
It seeks for every truth of science; it has to do 
with every interest of men; it soars up perpetu- 
ally to do with heaven. 

This, then, is the goal of both culture and faith 
— "To attain unto a full-grown man" — in whom 
both 

Mind and heart according well 
May make one music as before, 
But vaster. 

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